MOWERY: Tigers final grades for the season

In the case of the 2013 Detroit Tigers, though, that equation might not add up completely.

Several players had excellent individual seasons, and will be justly rewarded in the upcoming weeks, but the team’s season as a whole has to be judged as a disappointment, simply for the fact that it was unable to even make it back to the World Series, let alone win the first title since 1984.

“I do believe we let one get away,” manager Jim Leyland said after the season ended in the American League Championship Series. “This is one that really hurts.”

The disappointment of falling short had hardly registered with the Tigers when another shock hit, as they — and then the rest of us — found out Leyland had decided to step down.

Nobody had any idea it was coming.

“No, none. We were as shocked as you guys probably were whenever you found out,” Don Kelly said.

“It was a little bit of a shock, I think, to most guys. I don’t think anybody had any idea that was coming. It was a little emotional,” Alex Avila said in an interview on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM. “A lot of us on this team have only known Jim Leyland as our manager so it was definitely a little bit of a shock for a lot of guys and a little emotional. After he talked to us we applauded him for giving us everything he had.”

A lot of guys gave everything they had.

The prime example: Miguel Cabrera gamely hobbled through the second half of the season with a severely strained — and possibly torn — groin, an injury that might require offseason surgery.

But the net result was short of the ultimate goal. And the team grade for the season will reflect that.

“I don’t think we played our best baseball. That’s hard to do at this level,” Justin Verlander said. “At this level, it’s not easy in the playoffs, when you’re playing against the other best team in the American League. I don’t think we left anything out there. Everybody did everything they possibly could. It’s disappointing, but there’s nothing to hang our heads about, whatsoever.”

The offseason hangover won’t last long, probably only through next week, before the Tigers can refocus on their still unfulfilled goal.

“Probably when the World Series is over. Then you can start appreciating the good things in 2013. Right now, you’re just numb to it. When you lose a game like this, you’re always extremely disappointed,” said Max Scherzer after Game 6 of the ALCS. “You just replay every play in your mind: ‘What could I have done differently? What could I have done differently?’ That’s where, as professionals here, we try to learn from our mistakes, try to get better. Because hopefully we are in this situation again. Hopefully we can execute next time, and be the ones celebrating because we’re going to the World Series.”

If they do that, the grade for the 2014 Tigers will be higher than that for the 2013 Tigers.

Considering what this year’s team accomplished — and what it did not — you’d have a hard time grading it any higher than a “B” as a team.

What follows are the final individual grades for the units, broken down by player, for the 2013 Detroit Tigers:

STARTING PITCHINGOne of the most dominant units in all of baseball, the Tigers’ starters were again the backbone of the team, in the regular season and postseason, setting strikeout records galore. Each starter contributed 29 or more starts, 177 or more innings and 13 or more wins. Three of the starters had 200-plus strikeouts, and three had 200-plus innings.

Finding fault with any of the five — at least when measured against their respective roles — is hard to do.

Scherzer established himself as one of baseball’s dominating starters, finally finding the consistency to harness the vast potential in his right arm. He’s the odds-on favorite to win the Cy Young award, and rightfully so.

The Tigers’ last Cy Young winner, Verlander, had a forgettable regular season, in which he struggled to find consistent command of his fastball, in particular, resulting in what was — especially for his standards — a down year. He turned it around in the postseason, though, allowing just one earned run in 23 masterful playoff innings. His grade has to reflect that combination.

Anibal Sanchez more than justified the Tigers’ offseason decision to re-sign him to a long-term, $88 million contract in the offseason, ranking among the elite pitchers during the regular season. Doug Fister and Rick Porcello were as reliable as you could ask for from a No. 4 and No. 5 starter.

BULLPENThis unit only got lined up when the Tigers found a solution at closer in former set-up man Joaquin Benoit, who was flawless until the very end of the regular season. He’ll get harshly blamed for his one-pitch, series-changing grand slam he allowed to Boston’s David Ortiz in the ALCS, but given what the Tigers could have had to pay to solidify the role, he was a godsend. If only they’d tried him sooner.

Drew Smyly was the second-best reliever in the pen after losing out on the fifth starter job in spring training, and Jose Veras was a stable veteran presence for the most part after he came over from Houston at the trade deadline.

Other than that, though, it was a crapshoot. Just as it had been all season long.

And that’s as much why the Tigers are sitting at home this weekend as any other.

Octavio Dotel missed the whole season, and closer-of-the-future Bruce Rondon missed the most critical part. Phil Coke may have been pitching injured all season, but regardless, he was pitching poorly throughout, and is a non-tender candidate.

Al Alburquerque can be bafflingly inconsistent — brilliant at times, unreliable at others — while youngsters like Jose Alvarez, Luke Putkonen, Darin Downs, Evan Reed and Brayan Villarreal proved they were not ready at various points of the season.

For all that it bought the team time, the Jose Valverde experiment was an unmitigated disaster, and the Jeremy Bonderman experiment wasn’t a whole lot better.

INFIELDCabrera could walk — or make that hobble — away with his second straight Most Valuable Player award in early November, and he would have earned that for his gutsy playing through pain in the last half of the season, if not for his brilliance before that.

He won his third straight AL batting title — the first right-handed hitter to do so since Nap Lajoie (1901-’04). He’s the first right-handed hitter to win three straight in either league since Rogers Hornsby in the 1920s.

“He wasn’t 100 percent for the whole last month and a half. In my book, that makes him every bit more the MVP than it would’ve otherwise,” Verlander said. “I think 90 percent of baseball players would’ve been sitting on the couch, not playing, dealing with what he’s dealt with this year.”

Cabrera was on pace to destroy RBI records through the All-Star break, and possibly win his second straight Triple Crown. He fell short of those marks, in part because of a September in which he had virtually no power, but still had one of the best offensive seasons in the majors.

His running mate, Prince Fielder, did not, however. He posted his sixth 100-RBI campaign in seven seasons, and played in all 162 games, continuing his iron-man streak, but it was not his finest year. He finished with 25 homers and a slugging percentage of .457 — his lowest totals in any full season in the majors — and was a virtual non-factor in the playoffs.

Jhonny Peralta will get downgraded for putting himself in a situation to hurt the team with a 50-game suspension for violations of the league’s Joint Drug Policy, but he helped the team whenever he was available. He was one of the key reasons the Tigers got as far as the ALCS, providing one of the squad’s hottest bats in the postseason.

Omar Infante was steady when he was in the lineup — missing 44 games with a knee injury — giving the Tigers tremendous stability up the middle, no matter who his double-play partner was at the time.

The trade for Jose Iglesias kept the Tigers afloat during Peralta’s suspension, and he will likely be the everyday shortstop for the for the remainder of this decade. His defense is unparalleled, but the Tigers will have to figure out how to properly use his skill set offensively.

Avila struggled with injuries during the regular season, as well, but turned it on at the end, providing one of the few bright spots in what seemed to be a team-wide slump at the end of the season.

OUTFIELDTorii Hunter provided a spark for the Tigers on and off the field. The loquacious veteran moved immediately into a vocal leadership role, and backed it up by hitting .300 for the second time in his career — each of the last two seasons.

His defense in right field, while definitely not up to the Gold Glove standard he’d displayed earlier in his career, was still an upgrade from what the Tigers had previously.

Austin Jackson regressed after a resurgent 2012, playing in a career-low 129 games, thanks to injuries, failing to crack the 100-run plateau. His offensive numbers were not quite to the low they’d dipped to in 2011, but at least then he had stellar defense to fall back on — in 2013, he did not. While the outfield defense as a whole might have been better, it was not a case of Jackson catching everything from gap-to-gap, as we’d become used to.

The left-field platoon of Andy Dirks and Matt Tuiasosopo was nothing special as a whole, although Dirks is a finalist for the Gold Glove in left field. Both players struggled at various times at the plate: Tuiasosopo dropped off precipitously after a red-hot start, and Dirks was inconsistent enough that he was called upon little in the postseason.

BENCHIf you want to factor designated hitter Victor Martinez in as a bench player, that’s the only way this unit gets a passing grade.

Martinez started the season slowly, coming back from missing all of 2012 after knee surgery. The slow start didn’t keep him from finishing over the .300 mark for the fourth straight season, adding 14 homers and 83 RBI.

Brayan Pena held the fort behind the plate when Avila missed time with injuries, and became a fan favorite with his upbeat personality. He wasn’t the ideal platoon-mate for the left-handed-hitting Avila, though hitting far better from the left side, and did not see much action in the postseason. Third-string catcher Bryan Holaday did everything you could expect from a kid still getting his feet wet.

Ramon Santiago was steady defensively when called upon, but provided no spark with his bat. Hernan Perez filled in capably at second when Infante was hurt, but wasn’t much more than a potential pinch-runner when it came to crunch time in the playoffs.

Top prospect Nick Castellanos didn’t show a whole lot in limited time in his September debut, and Danny Worth got hurt almost immediately, after spending the whole season languishing in Toledo.

COACHING STAFFIt seems cruel to mark Leyland down for much of anything in what ends up being his final year at the helm of the Tigers, ending a successful eight-year run, in which the team won 700 games and three straight division titles, and made two trips to the World Series.

Yet he did not come through on his promise to team owner Mike Ilitch to bring him a World Series title, and for that, you have to knock him down at least a letter grade. Everyone knew what this season’s expectations were, and they were not met.

Still, 2013 was a much smoother ride than the previous year, and there no major blow-ups, no SNAFUs — at least not that can be laid at Leyland’s door.

As for the rest of the staff, pitching coach Jeff Jones continued to work wonders with the starters, helping Scherzer turn himself into one of the elite pitchers in baseball, and helping Justin Verlander find himself at just the right time.

The switch to move Gene Lamont off third base, and replace him with Tom Brookens certainly didn’t improve the Tigers’ baserunning any. It would be charitable to call it a push, even.

Lloyd McClendon earned justifiable praise in 2012 for ‘fixing’ Austin Jackson, but the leadoff hitter regressed this season, and the hitting coach had no solutions that helped Prince Fielder get out of the season-long slump that was just magnified in the postseason.